Tree of Life Services - End of Life & Funeral Services

12/03/2025

A new End of Life Directory has been created on the Eurobodalla Council's Website by end-of-life educator Shanna Provost, funeral celebrant and author of the Rest Easy Journal, a guide to getting your affairs in order.

This is a marvellous resource and I hope to be able to have added a number of End of Life Doula contacts to this directory.

Please share this resource with anyone you think will benefit.


Lauren Newman, Tree of Life Funerals with Picaluna
Ph: 0493-276-554 or (02) 4412-9228

Contact details for a range of services that may help support those approaching end of life.

15/02/2025

This funeral director wants to talk about the ultimate taboo

By Tim Grey (Bay Post & Moruya Examiner) 12 February 2025

Most Australians don't want to talk about death. Lauren Newman talks about it every day.

As a funeral director and end-of-life doula at Tree of Life Funerals, Ms Newman's whole occupation was to help others come to terms with dying.

"Our society is traditionally death-phobic and doesn't want to talk about it," she said.

"And I know that lack of education and knowledge about this subject can cause fear, because it's a fear of the unknown."

The way to dispel that fear, according to Ms Newman, was to share it with your community.

"Many years ago, when people lived in smaller communities people would die at home," she said.

"There were always people who would help you through the death process, priests or ministers or women to help transition you through those major times of your life, and that's gone."

That role had now fallen to people like Ms Newman, who walked families through all the uncomfortable steps of death: certifying medical documentation, transporting bodies, organising venues and flowers, printing booklets and composing slideshows, and arranging the burial or cremation.

"Every death is different, like every person is different," she said.

"I always go and see the family, and I always make sure I go and visit them in their home to see some photos of the person, so I can know who we're talking about."

A former nurse at Westmead Hospital, Ms Newman had come to terms with death early on, though she was never desensitised to it.

"I've always had very strong spiritual beliefs. And I fully believe that our spirit goes on," she said.

"So that basically allows me to do the work that I do, because I have that surety within myself that this is the vessel, this is the body, that the soul has left, that we have to honour that vessel, and that we have to honour that spirit as well."

As an end-of-life doula, Ms Newman helped those with terminal conditions navigate through their final days, ensuring they approached the experience in comfort and tranquillity.

"Helping someone through those last moments of their life and just providing as much comfort as possible because dying well in peace and without fear is so important," she said.

"That's what I wanted to change in so many ways, was to bring the person into the service and to sort of wrap your arms around the family too and allow them to properly grieve."

Ms Newman was also a proponent of environmentally friendly funerals and encouraged families to forgo the wasteful and toxic materials found in a traditional coffin, which was often burned immediately.

Instead, she advised the bereaved to consider a simple cardboard version, or hand-woven wicker baskets, both entirely biodegradable.

"A lot of the old traditional funeral thing is that you spend up big, buy a fancy coffin to show how much you love your deceased person," she said.

"But your love of your person is shown by all the effort you're making now to ensure that you say goodbye to them in a loving way."

For those who were curious about the subject of dying, Ms Newman was running regular 'death cafes', where attendees could freely discuss the taboo.

"I think it's so important to acknowledge human pain and the conditions that bring that about," she said.

"It could very well reduce those conditions by talking about it, and not making it so fearful, not making it so closed again."

Ultimately, Ms Newman hoped to bring a gentle acceptance to an event affecting all of us.

"It's about accepting that our life is finite," she said.

"And we're not immortal."


www.treeoflifefunerals.com.au

06/02/2025

Funerals are events we don’t usually think about.
By Lauren Newman, Tree of Life Funerals.

When I tell people I’m an End-of-Life Doula, most people have never heard the term, so I explain that it’s a person who educates, supports and assists with end of life.

An End-of-Life Doula (EOLD) has a non-medical role and is an ‘informed companion’ who educates their client, and family, about the end-of-life process. At the same time, they bring comfort and compassion to assist a person, and their family, to feel safe and supported as they accompany those through the final months, weeks, and days of life – right up until the time of death and beyond.

Presence is the foundation for this model of care. Emotional support, active listening, and creation of a peaceful environment are of the utmost importance.

EOLDs ensure that individuals and their families do not feel alone or isolated.

When I moved to Catalina over three years ago, I quickly realised there was a shortage of personal end of life services in the Eurobodalla Shire. I also saw there was a lack of choice for funerals and after-death services, so I decided I would do what I could to change that as I had worked as a funeral director in Canberra, so I knew what to do. I started Tree of Life Funerals.

Funerals are events we don’t usually think about until we attend one or if someone we love dies and suddenly, we need to arrange one, but people don’t realise how important it is to become death-literate and to plan for the inevitable, monumental moment in all our lives, which is death.

Planning for death gives your life so much more freedom.

Even with the growing population in the Shire, there is still only one Registered Mortuary here and the costs involved with setting up and running a mortuary are prohibitive to small funeral operators so I found a funeral partner in Picaluna Beautiful Funerals, which allowed me access to our local mortuary as well as providing a host of support services, so I can devote my time to individuals and their families when it comes to end of life planning, as well as planning, arranging and conducting funerals.

We offer pre-paid funerals too.

I have all the necessary equipment to transfer deceased persons from their place of death to the mortuary, I supply beautiful, affordable, coffins as well as a range of eco-friendly wicker ones, or cardboard if that’s your choice.

I’m an experienced Funeral Celebrant and I arrange and conduct personalised, heart-felt services which really celebrate the person who has died and I support their families along the way.

I provide choice. Choice and options in where you’d like to hold a service, conducting funeral services on people’s properties, in a garden, in a church, in a chapel, places which were meaningful to the person and which mean so much to the people left behind.

I have supported people and their families who have chosen Voluntary Assisted Dying, which has its own unique and special challenges for all involved, saying farewell with love and dignity.
As a member of my local community, my intention is to provide the best-possible community-based services.

My husband supports and works with me along with other people who also work part-time in nursing and aged care. I have met and befriended other local End-of-Life Doulas who have been with me providing beautiful funeral services, mentoring them to become Picaluna funeral arrangers and directors like myself.

We are building a community of people who provide beautiful end of life and funeral services. I can provide other Celebrants too, people who will spend time with families to craft individual and beautiful services. I can create lovely memorial slideshows to play during a service, provide music, and arrange for live-streaming of the service in some venues.

We have also started holding monthly Death Conversation Cafés at the Malua Bay Community Centre on a Sunday afternoon between 2-4pm, and Deepika Mistry advertises these on Facebook and around town.

The next one is on Sunday 23 February, so come along for a coffee, tea, and cake, as well as some fascinating and enlightening conversation with warm and friendly people, probably the best $10 investment you’ve made for a while!
www.treeoflifefunerals.com.au

Tree of Life Funerals with Picaluna create authentic, personalised, heart-felt funeral services which really reflect the individual. We walk alongside the bereaved at their most significant time of need, ensuring personal, caring and individual attention.We honour death as one of life’s precious t...

20/01/2025

A Mary Oliver Poem 'When Death Comes'

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

Mary Oliver (1935-2019) was a Pulitzer Prize winning poet.

08/01/2025

Nothing insulates us from grief.

A recent article in the Washington Post by Joshua Coleman, PhD, a clinical psychologist, caught my attention because it talked about ‘Radical Acceptance’.

A way of accepting the traumas that come our way because nothing insulates us from the humiliations and losses that are an everyday risk of being human. Nothing insulates us from grief.

Most of us can be blindsided by traumatic events. An accident can leave someone so grievously injured that they are unable to continue the activities that gave their life joy and purpose. A romantic partner can suddenly decide they want to date other people, or leave us altogether. We can get diagnosed with an incurable illness. Someone we love can die or take their own life.

We are thrown into a state of grief, a natural response to the loss of someone or something that was important in our life.

What’s a soul to do?

A growing body of research suggests that the more you fight against your pain, the stronger and louder it’s going to get.

It’s advised that “the pathway out of hell is through misery. The more you fight your misery, the more you stay in hell.” The goal of radical acceptance is not to condone or approve of a situation but to recognize its existence and let go of the emotional suffering caused by fighting reality.

Give yourself room to experience the feelings fully, don’t try to push them down or away. And don’t judge yourself for feeling whatever it is that you’re feeling. For example, in the face of your breakup, radical acceptance means a full-fledged acknowledgment that the relationship is over and he’s not coming back.

“Your pain needs space,” Megan Devine writes in “It’s OK That You’re Not OK.” “Room to unfold. Maybe your pain could wrap around the axle of the universe several times. Only the stars are large enough to take it on.”

Criticizing or shaming yourself binds you to your suffering. Self-condemning thoughts such as: “I’m too sensitive. How come I’m not over this yet? Why did this happen to me?” make the pain of your situation more intolerable.

“We cannot change a thought that is already here,” Mark Levine, a psychiatrist and founder of the non-profit Mind to Mindful, said. “The more we struggle to fix or change our negative thoughts, the more we agitate the nervous system and inadvertently strengthen the very thoughts and emotions that we wish to avoid.”

Pain is unavoidable. It’s what we do with the pain that matters. As Devine writes, “When you are broken, the correct response is to be broken.” Accepting that reality doesn’t make life more painful — it makes it more bearable — especially when it feels impossible to bear.

Tree of Life Funerals with Picaluna Beautiful Funerals recommend Griefline with free, compassionate and confidential support every day of the year https://griefline.org.au/

For the full article and for other interesting articles, see the Blog page at www.treeoflifefunerals.com.au

Lauren Newman, End of Life Doula, Funeral Director, Celebrant, JP.

Griefline has been delivering free Grief & Loss support and resources to everyday Australians for over 30 years, no matter where they are or what time of day it is.

08/01/2025

Live A Life That Matters - Author Unknown

Ready or not, some day it will all come to an end.
There will be no more sunrises, no minutes, hours, days.
All the things you collected, whether treasured or forgotten, will pass to someone else.

Your wealth, fame and temporal power will shrivel to irrelevance.
It will not matter what you owned or what you were owed.
Your grudges, resentments, frustrations, and jealousies will finally disappear.

So, too, your hopes, ambitions, plans, and to-do lists will expire.
The wins and losses that once seemed so important will fade away.
It won't matter where you came from, or on what side of the tracks you lived.

At the end, whether you were beautiful or brilliant, male or female,
even your skin colour won't matter.

So what will matter? How will the value of your days be measured?

What will matter is not what you bought, but what you built;
not what you got, but what you gave.
What will matter is not your success, but your significance.

What will matter is not what you learned, but what you taught.
What will matter is every act of integrity, compassion, courage or sacrifice that enriched, empowered or encouraged others.

What will matter is not your competence, but your character.
What will matter is not how many people you knew,
but how many will feel a lasting loss when you're gone.

What will matter is not your memories, but the memories that live in those who loved you.

Living a life that matters doesn't happen by accident.
It's not a matter of circumstance but of choice.

Choose to live a life that matters.

02/12/2024

FUNERAL NOTICE

Peter Leonard WARREN
25.09.1934 – 26.11.2024

A funeral service for Peter will be held on:

Friday, 6 December 2024 at 10:30am at
Norwood Park Crematorium
65 Sandford Street, Mitchell ACT

Those who knew and loved Peter are warmly invited to attend.

Live streaming link:
https://www.norwoodpark.com.au/service-streaming/client/?nid=ebb63823-23e5-41ab-88b6-9236319ed463

www.treeoflifefunerals.com.au

27/11/2024

18/11/2024

As we move through our lives, we can’t avoid death. Why do I keep talking about death? Because it’s part of life! When we can embrace that fact and accept that one day, our body will die, life becomes all the sweeter, more precious.

When Deepika Mistry, another End of Life Doula and I, hosted the Death Conversations Café at Malua Bay recently, we were honoured to be able to provide a safe and supported space for the sharing of some deeply personal experiences and the raising of so many important subjects.

Some of the conversations were about the deaths that had touched our lives, sudden deaths, extended and lingering deaths, the death of a child, parents, friends, people we had loved, planning and holding funerals, Voluntary Assisted Dying, and how our community can support us to grieve, process and accept these terrible losses in our lives, how we can support each other to come to realise that life is still beautiful and we need to find new ways of living our own lives so we’re not lost in grief, but to re-find that joy.

I’d like to start more conversations here, on my Tree of Life Services page. We can find that community support, right here, so feel free to leave your comments and questions and I'll do my best to provide the answers.

I started Tree of Life Services to be able to offer End of Life Doula and end of life support services to my local community, to spread the word about how to have a good life, right to the end.

I then started Tree of Life Funerals in Batemans Bay so I could also offer choice in how you could say your farewells to not only the people you love and care about, but for you to craft your own farewell, just the way you’d like it.

Having a beautiful funeral which really reflects the individual.

Of course, if your choice for a no-service funeral, I honour everyone’s wishes and provide these too, with the same amount of love and respect.

I chose the Tree of Life because it symbolises the circle of life, and because I could see the branches of that tree reaching out to people to provide love and support, the strength of those branches reflected in the community I hope to build.

Deepika and I will be working together to provide our communities with not only end of life support, but education and assistance in completing the necessary end of life paperwork (there is always paperwork!) and referrals to the right people to help you with grief and your end of life questions.

We will be holding more Death Conversations Cafes as well as other wonderful events, join us, and start the conversation!

Deepika will be advertising events as well and she’s here: https://www.facebook.com/search/top?q=deepika%20mistry-%20end%20of%20life%20doula Deepika Mistry- End of Life Doula

If you’d like to be on my email mailing list, please email me at [email protected]
and I can also email you my handy list of Useful Contacts and other useful documents if you’d like, and keep you up to date on events.

In love and gratitude, Lauren Newman

Walawaani Way Conservation Burial

12/11/2024

HOW TO LIVE WELL, RIGHT TO THE END

Life planning starts by identifying your values, ambitions, and dreams and so does end of life planning!

Lauren and her group of End of Life Doulas can guide you through. We can help you complete your final “To Do” checklist in one convenient appointment in the comfort of your own home.

• Have you written a will? Is it up to date?
• Have you nominated your power of attorney?
• Who will be your enduring guardian?
• Have you written your advance care directive?
• Have you registered your organ and tissue donation wishes and told your family?
• If you have young children who will be their legal guardian?
• Where do you keep your important documents? Who has access to them?
• Have you recorded your passwords for all your online accounts and social media profile?

• Have you discussed your end of life plans with family and friends?
• Who will receive special family items such as photos and treasured heirlooms?
• Who will become guardian of your children and/or pets?
• What do you hope for the people who are around you while you're dying?
• Would you prefer to die at home?
• Do you know what you want to say to your family and friends?
• What would you like to be said to you in your final days/moments?
• Have you told your loved ones what medical interventions you want and do not want?

Don’t know where to start? Well, call Lauren on 0493-276-554 and see www.treeoflifeservices.com.au for further information.

Putting your end of life plans in place is a gift for the people you care about.
Deepika Mistry- End of Life Doula

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02/11/2024

It's a very normal human impulse to want to make people feel better, but trying to cheer up a grieving person simply doesn't work. Most people don’t want to be cheered up, they want to feel HEARD.

When things are dark, it’s ok to be dark. Not every corner needs the bright light of encouragement. In a similar vein, don’t encourage someone to have gratitude for the good things that still exist. Good things and horrible things occupy the same space; they don’t cancel each other out.

Instead, mirror their reality back to them. When they say, “This entirely sucks,” say, “Yes, it does.” It’s amazing how much that helps. It's amazing how that small act of acknowledgement helps.

It is an unfathomable relief to have a friend who will sit with you and let you feel exactly how you feel.⁣

For more on how to help a grieving friend, visit refugeingrief.com or watch our short animation, "How do you help a grieving friend?" at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2zLCCRT-nE

www.treeoflifeservices.com.au

01/11/2024

Holding a funeral service allows for the start of healing, it’s acknowledgment that someone we love is no longer with us in the physical, it’s the start of giving yourself permission to grieve and to feel your sadness, it’s the start of learning new ways of living without that person.

Having a funeral service which really reflects the person who has died provides real comfort for the people left behind as it feels so much more meaningful.

Did you know that you can have some personal time in the Chapel at Broulee Memorial Gardens just prior to a no-service cremation taking place to say your personal goodbyes? Not only is it lovely, it’s a less costly way of saying your farewell.

We can also arrange a no-service funeral and then help you hold a Memorial Service at a later date, which is a beautiful option.

Talk to us about how we can help you have beautiful, meaningful services for someone you care about.

www.treeoflifeservices.com.au

09/10/2024

Are you a mature, compassionate person who currently doesn’t work fulltime and can be flexible with your time?

Are you a Funeral Celebrant, Marriage Celebrant, End of Life Doula, or someone who has worked in an end-of-life environment who would like to move into something more? Have you ever thought about working as a Funeral Director or as a funeral attendant?

There is an opportunity to work with Picaluna Beautiful Funerals and Tree of Life Funerals. We service Batemans Bay to Narooma and surrounds. We can also arrange funerals in Canberra as well as mortuary transfers to and from Batemans Bay so there is a lot of opportunity to be of service to your community.

Picaluna will provide the training and management support to ensure you have all the training needed and I would be your mentor along the way.

Picaluna and Tree of Life Funerals offer families and friends an alternative way to say goodbye to the people they love. We work to make the process of arranging a funeral to be more personal, more compassionate, more transparent, and a simpler and smoother process, and we strive to be more affordable. We offer traditional and unique funerals, full funeral service or no funeral service funerals.

Tree of Life Funerals with Picaluna has been operating in the Eurobodalla since the start of 2024 and are looking to expand the number of funeral services we can provide.

The Picaluna model is based on people working as independent Funeral Directors, Celebrants and Attendants under the Picaluna banner.

In the Eurobodalla, you would be working closely with Tree of Life Funerals who would provide hands-on support as well as the infrastructure of a traditional funeral provider.

I must emphasise that this is not a fulltime role as funerals arise on an as-needed basis and you would be an independent contractor with Picaluna.

If this sounds like it would be of interest to you, please send an email expressing your interest to Lauren Newman at: [email protected]

www.treeoflifefunerals.com.au
https://www.picaluna.com/